St Valentine's Day
by ACleverName
Summary: Some time before Boom Town, the Doctor and Rose stumble upon some sinister goingson while London rebuilds from the Great Fire of 1666.
1. Chapter 1

"Where to next?"

It was a little game the Doctor played. Rose was sitting on the console room couch, the Doctor at the controls, and Jack had just walked through the doors. Jack and Rose exchanged a look. Rose stretched and yawned. "How about London?" she threw out.

The Doctor looked at her and then the floor. "Oh."

"No, I mean, I want to see some more history," Rose said, playing with the elastic of her blue hoodie.

The Doctor smiled. "All right."

"Preferably not the Blitz again," Jack said, motioning for Rose to scoot over.

"Count the nineteenth century out," said the Doctor. "We've just been."

"Oh yeah?" Jack asked, stretching his arm across the couch and not quite touching Rose. "What all did you see?"

"Cardiff," said the Doctor and Rose at once. Rose began to laugh and patted Jack's knee. "I met Charles Dickens, I did."

Jack grinned. "Oh yeah . . . Charles Dickens. Not a bad-looking guy."

"Get out."

"I mean, when he was young."

The Doctor rolled his eyes, and Jack gave a mysterious, leering smile. "You say that about everyone," Rose teased.

"No," said Jack. "Not everyone." Rose tilted her head back, slightly, staring at Jack as long as she dared.

"I'm waiting, here," the Doctor interrupted. "Give me a date."

"Oh, _I'll _give you a date," Jack said with exaggerated lewdness, pulling himself off the couch and sidling over to the Doctor.

Rose played with her rings. "I'd like to see the Fire. You know, 1666 an' all that."

Jack glanced at the Doctor. "Isn't that a little dangerous?"

Rose opened her mouth to balk. "Yeah, it is dangerous," said the Doctor. "A curious choice, too, 'siderin' that we've already seen the destruction of the Earth."

His glance was cutting. Rose looked away. "What?" Jack asked.

"Doctor, no one died in that Fire. It left a lot of people homeless, but no one got killed, yeah?" It was almost a dare, a brazen sally.

"It seems Rose's made her choice," the Doctor said seriously, looking at htem both. "London Fire it is."

Rose jumped off the couch. "I just want to watch, you know," she said appeasingly to Jack. "We can park some ways off, yeah, and just sort of look a' it." She glanced at the Doctor for confirmation. He was pushing a bellows on the console as he set the coordinates. "Maybe walk around a little—I'm kind of looking forward to getting dressed up again."

Jack gave her a tiny smile. "We just don't want that pretty face of yours getting singed." The Doctor gave him a dark look, and Jack stopped smiling.

Rose moved toward Jack, swinging her hips ever so slightly. "Is that all I am to you, Jack? A pretty face?" She grinned.

Jack gave her an all-encompassing look that left little to the imagination. "Absolutely not."

"Would you two knock it off?" By the annoyance in his voice, the Doctor has only half-teasing. Both Rose and Jack looked down guiltily. "Rose, hold down that lever. Jack, connect that cord into that socket." Holding down two handles himself, the Doctor was amazingly eloquent with just his chin to point out directions. Rose and Jack hurried to their respective tasks. "Crisis averted," the Doctor said, obliquely, after a moment. "Rose, you know the drill—go get dressed."

" 'Kay," said Rose, picking her way across the metal gantry.

"Wow, you look great!" Rose entered the console room in a light green gown, tight-bodiced, with ruffly white sleeves, a long, straight petticoat, the skirt drawn over the back.

"Do you really ffink so?" she said with a completely honest frown, trying to view the back of the skirt. The ruffly edges of the underchemise obscured the low bosom, and she had a shawl in muted colors wrapped around her shoulders. "I don't ffink it's as elegant as my 1860s frock." She turned to show Jack the back of the gown. She looked up at the Doctor. "Doctor?"

He looked up for the first time. "Very in-period."

Rose looked at Jack. "No, I mean it. You look great." Rose smiled tremulously. She seemed to notice for the first time that not only was Jack dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, he was holding a mug of tea with a box of Kleenex next to him on the couch. "What about you? Why aren't you dressed?" She grinned, her tongue swiping the front of her mouth cheekily. "I was looking forward to seeing you in tight breeches and stockings."

Jack glanced at the Doctor. "I'll bet you were." He sneezed, loudly, into a tissue. "Rose, you may find this hard to believe, but I think I've come down with a cold." He sneezed again.

"You've got to be jokin'. Haven't they eliminated the common cold by the fifty-first century?"

"Well—"

"Rose, are you coming?" The Doctor was at the doors with a distinctly impatient look.

"Yeah, just wait a minute." She turned back to Jack. "So, you're just going to sit here? While we . . . watch London burn?"

"You shouldn't be gone too long, it'll give me a chance to recuperate . . ." Rose opened her mouth to argue. "I'll be fine. Do some shopping if you get a chance," he said. "Bring me something cool, okay?"

"Rose?"

"Here, if you get into any trouble," Jack said, unfastening the band of leather from his left wrist, "use this."

Her eyes widened. "Your watch? Are you sure?"

"This is me leaving . . . "

"Yeah. Take it. Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he said with a wink.

Rose moved slowly toward the doors. "Feel better." Jack nodded. Rose reached the doors and walked out, reluctantly.

She was struck at once by the cold, as the Doctor locked the TARDIS door. "Did you make him stay?" Rose asked with barely-concealed anger.

"I didn't make him do anything! You heard him, he has a cold."

"Bollocks," Rose said.

The Doctor's look was cold and angry. "If my company isn't to your liking—"

"I just wanted for us all to go out together, tha's all," said Rose, embarrassingly close to tears. "To have fun, together."

"What, like one big happy family?" His sarcasm needled.

Rose hadn't minded the state Jack had put the Doctor in before—frankly, in her own thoughts she called it "captain envy moments"—but she certainly didn't want the Doctor to call her a stupid ape again. She took a deep breath and exhaled, watching her breath diffuse. "All right." She pulled the shawl tighter around her. "Are you gonna offer me your arm?"

The Doctor looked troubled for a moment before holding out his jacketed arm. She wondered what kind of stares they were going to get with him dressed the way he was—hadn't even changed jumpers this time, she noted. She took his arm, and they began to walk. The smell began to hit Rose, something that hadn't really been so big of a deal in 1869 Cardiff. She shivered. "Why's it so cold?"

"Because it's February," said the Doctor, deadpan.

Rose looked up. She hadn't been _that _pants in history. "I thought the Great Fire of London happened in the summer?"

The Doctor looked at his watch. "We've landed in February 1669. Sorry."

His disarming grin of innocence couldn't convince her. "Did both of you ffink I couldn't take care of myself?" She stopped and looked at the sleeping city skyline. "No wonder I didn't see anyffink burnin'."

"I didn't do this on purpose," he said, almost cajolingly. "You know the TARDIS—unpredictable as ever." He grinned again, to no avail. He cleared his throat. "If you'd like to go back and stay with Jack, you've got your key—"

"Who said anyfink about going back?" Her voice was too shrill; her disappointment too obvious. She moved briskly, toward the City. "What happens in 1669?"

"I don't know."

She wrapped her shawl tighter. "Well, Jack said there was good shopping to be had, and I'm sure I can find somefink pretty unusual for my mum."

"Yes." He laughed. "You just might." He looked down. "Are your hands cold?" She nodded. He started to chafe them in his. "Would you like to see them rebuilding St Paul's? There's a chance Christopher Wren himself might be there himself."

Rose's face lit from within. "Yeah," she said, and they were off.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two.**

Rose caught her breath at the empty shell of St Paul's cathedral, nearly three years after it had been burnt. Of course, it wasn't the St Paul's she knew. This one lacked the famous dome she had seen, very recently in fact, from a barrage balloon. The smoked-out ruins were weird and ghostly in the early morning light. Not completely deserted—every once in awhile, a person would dart from the yard in front of the massive skeleton. "Wha's that?" she asked. "What are those people doing?"

"I don't know," said the Doctor. "Should we go and have a look?" She nodded. As they moved toward the yard, Rose asked, "Doctor . . . I thought the building would be further along by now."

"They haven't started building," said the Doctor. "Haven't even decided on a design yet." As they moved, Rose looked at the rest of the street. Charred rubble everywhere, some of it abandoned, some of it flanked by shacks and lean-tos.

"Why not?"

He looked at her, surprised. "Better things to do, Rose. There's a war on, with the Dutch. People being taken to Fire Court. There were eighty-six churches before the Fire," he said. "How many do think they're going to rebuild?"

She decided it was a rhetorical question and turned her attention to the people standing in front of them. They were looking down at something. She heard words like "miracle" and "amazing" come out of their mouths. They moved away, and she found herself staring at a mummified corpse in a coffin. She turned away, pressing her face against the Doctor's shoulder.

"Doctor, what is this?"

"A corpse."

"I can see that—an' smell it too! Why are we lookin' at it?"

"Must have survived the flames," she heard him say. She hazarded another look. The Doctor pointed toward the cathedral. "The interior and the crypt's been broken up. Coffins brought to the surface."

"Not really what I wanted to see."

"Perhaps you should have thought about that before you decided on the London Fire." She recoiled at his coldness, then looked over his shoulder. A thin man in a large brown wig was staring, not at the corpse, but at the cathedral. He was muttering to himself and sketching onto a sheet of paper. The Doctor noticed him, too. He took several of his large strides toward the man. "Christopher Wren, I presume?"

The man looked up. "Do I know you, sir?"

"By reputation only," said the Doctor vaguely. "I was taking my young friend here to see the ruins. I understand your plans are being considered for rebuilding."

Wren drew up his wig nervously over his head. "Well, I'm only making preliminary sketches."

"May I?" Rose asked, peeking over Wren's shoulder. Wren lowered his drawing board. It was weird—small and cramped and a contorted-looking dome. She tried not to make a face. "They're . . . nice," she said. Wren's face was questioning, visibly slackening. He offered the sketches to the Doctor.

He mulled them over. "Ah, well, we've all got to start somewhere."

Wren's brows knit. "I beg your pardon?"

"Thank you very much, Doctor Wren," said the Doctor, placing his hand on Rose's shoulder and ushering her off, "but we've got to be going. I promised my young friend some shopping." Wren nodded, somewhat mystified. "Do you know if they've opened the New Exchange yet?"

Wren tutted. "They say it looks nearly done, but in my opinion, it won't be finished for years." He inclined his head. "Good day to you."

Rose followed where the Doctor was leading. "That wasn't St Paul's. He's got the drawings wrong."

"Nah, he's just getting started," the Doctor told her. "That man will live to the ripe old age of eighty-three and be responsible for some of the greatest architectural triumphs your world will ever see."

At least she could be certain what St Paul's would look like by her lifetime, she thought. The Doctor was giving no indication of where he was going or if he even knew. " 'Young friend'—wha's that about?" He looked at her. "Sounds a bit patronizing, doesn't it?"

"What would you prefer? Say words like 'companion' and people around here start makin' assumptions." The look on his face was eloquent enough that she hadn't the strength to quibble on what kind of "assumptions" people would make.

"Friend," she said. "Can't you just say, 'here's my friend Rose Tyler'?"

He smiled at her. "All right."

"You said you wanted to go shopping," said the Doctor. They were walking toward the river; she could smell it. He pointed. "The Old Exchange—what's left of it—is over there."

She tried to ignore the melancholy in his voice. They'd been walking in the Cheapside area—at least, she thought so—in near silence—heart of Fire territory. It was very different, the February cold of 1669 compared to the December cold of 1869—the magic she had felt the first time she had stepped out of the TARDIS into that atmosphere of the past . . . while it still sent a thrill in her to see the brick facades of cobblestoned streets, of servants wrapped in coats hurrying past, even seeing a sky that had not yet even dreamed of nuclear power—it wasn't the same. She could see on either side of the street that the devastation of the Fire had still not been completely assuaged. Stakes had gone up across the entire landscape, and while some buildings continued to go up apace, others were as skeletal and foreboding as St Paul's.

"Rose?"

"Yes, Doctor?"

He had stopped. He was still looking downriver. "The Royal Exchange—did you want to go or not?"

She put on a brave face. "Yeah, 'course." Taking a hunk of her skirts in a gloved hand, she moved quicker, in the pointy, high-heeled shoes that made her Cardiff boots seem like flip-flops. She followed him as he made for an open air market that did, indeed, seem like a bustle of activity. She glanced at her watch—or rather Jack's watch. "Pretty early, innit?"

"Vendors and traders set out their stuff by six," said the Doctor, matter-of-factly. "You've got to remember, Rose, that this is a society that goes to bed by nine. Cheaper that way, save on fuel for when the sun _is _shining. Humans _are _diurnal animals, after all."

She smiled. "Not all of us, Doctor."

He returned the smile and beckoned her. A flurry of motion and color met Rose's eyes. She was amazed that, after seeing the Earth burnt into a multi-colored crisp, she could still be dazzled by something as mundane as a seventeenth-century Harrod's. She tried to focus. Somehow, she had ignored the sound. Even though it was early, it seemed as though a hundred people had crowded into at least as many shops. She was aware of an abundance of patterned cloth—gloves, stockings, fans, ribbons, whale-bone curved into stays—where did she even begin? And the signs! A hand and a pair of scissors—a right ferocious-looking buck—a particularly beguiling lock of golden hair, curled and spun . . .

"Better get a move on," the Doctor prompted, not unkindly. "I don't have all day to be spendin' at a department store."

She was suddenly embarrassed. She had _worked _at Harrick's—she should know the drill, in any century. But she was more concerned with the thought of the Doctor hovering around like a disapproving parent. Was he going to look over her shoulder while she shopped?

"Doctor, are you . . .?"

"I'll be ri' here," he said, crossing his arms, speaking to her almost indulgently. "Can't miss me, can you?" When she waited a moment longer to respond, he said, "Look. Sign of the Beaver is the Hatter's Shop. The Lemon Tree is the fruiter's—but don' go there, fruit's rubbish this time of year. That Crown and sort of cubby-looking thing is for tea. Just take the plunge. Mind you, don' get swindled, and don' take too long," he said.

She nodded, then faced the crowd. _London Exchange, 1669: meet Rose Tyler, veteran shopper._

She was almost convinced he would not have remained in the same spot the entire time she had been making the rounds. She was surprised to see his lanky shape at the edge of the crowd, hidden behind a newspaper of some kind. How could he not be cold, she wondered. One of the first things she had bought was another shawl, for the air was bitterly cold.

"Happy shopping?" he asked when she approached, putting down the paper before she said a word.

"Got this cloth," she said, nodding to the material on her shoulders, "for twenty-six shillings. Reckon I got a bargain."

He frowned. "You got overcharged." He reached over to finger the material.

She pulled back, irritated. "I drive a hard bargain, Doctor, I'll have you know. Besides, what do you know about shoppin'? 'Snot like you were buying anyffink, were you?"

"This stuff," he said, gesturing broadly, "does nothing for me." He seemed to sense her flagging mood. "But if it's what you like, you enjoy it."

He wasn't telling the whole truth, she knew—the first time he'd come to her flat, while she'd made tea, he'd been playing with baubles and bricque-a-bracque like an immature child. "Well, you've got to get your clothes somewhere," she said, pointedly staring at the leather jacket.

"Pick things up as I go," he mumbled. On further reflection—"You should have seen what I _used _to wear."

"A bit more posh?"

He shook his head so violently his ears trembled. "You should have seen it—I don't know what I was thinking." She had resolved to quiz him a bit more on the subject of his clothes—after all, day in and day out, it had been leather/jumper/jeans; it was a revelation to think he had ever worn anything else—when he said, "Are you tired?"

She began to pack her purchases into a hat box. "No."

"All right, then let's go. We've got a city of 300,000 to explore."

"Is that all?"

He nodded, then looked down at the hatbox as they walked. "Get somethin' for your mum?"

She was surprised that he had asked. "As a matter of fact . . . eight ounces of tea, direct from China, so I was told."

"Keep that out of sight," the Doctor warned. "It's expensive."

She raised her eyebrows. Didn't she know? "A pair of gloves—I think she'll like them." The Doctor nodded. "A couple pretty fans . . ."

"And what did you get Jack?"

Rose's voice was coy. "I think that's between me and Jack, don't you ffink?" She had hoped he would take it as a joke, but he lapsed into moody silence. As far as she could tell, they were wandering, up from the river and west. She smelled coal fires and rotten oysters. The streets were filling up with people going about their daily business, from all walks of life if their dress was any indication. People hurried to get indoors, though the noise of street vendors selling everything from asses' milk to oysters was never far off. "Are we headed anywhere in particular?" she asked tentatively.

He looked down at her. "What do you want to do? This is your London."

For some reason she shivered as he said it. She unconsciously rubbed her stomach through the thick whale-bone corseting. "Can we get a coffee or somefink?"

He seemed to consider. "I think I know a place." This surprised her even more, as she hadn't been entirely certain coffee had been invented yet. She certainly hadn't been expecting Starbucks, but a warm drink going down would really hit the spot.

She blew on her hands. "Doctor, this feels strange."

"What does?"

"We've been out of the TARDIS—what? Two hours?"

"And?"

"Nuffink. No aliens. No panic-stricken runs down the pavement, no screaming, no explosions, no Daleks, no mannequins that shoot you—"

"No Adam!" the Doctor said, far too cheerfully. She stopped and looked at him. He hadn't said that name since Adam had left the TARDIS. The Doctor seemed to notice her silence, and said quickly, "First of all, we can't run down the pavement because there is no pavement." He looked down. "Just cobblestones." She fended off the grin. "Second, shouldn't that make you relaxed? That we haven't run into any of those things?"

"No, it makes me really worried!" she confessed, but she was grinning, too. "It's weird!"

"Maybe 1669 is just a dull year," said the Doctor.

Somehow, with the Doctor around, she couldn't believe that. She glanced at him, then what he was staring at. It seemed a fairly dingy building that had escaped the Fire's wrath, if its narrow rickety aspect was any indication. "What?"

"We're here," he said, pointing vaguely toward the sign. Rose squinted. "Will's Coffee Shop." She quirked an eyebrow at the Doctor. "This is where we're getting coffee?"

"Fantastic place, this!" the Doctor balked, leaning on a window sill. Rose peered in the old-fashioned plate glass windows to a smoky crowd of men in fluffy wigs. "I once sat an entire afternoon, discussing monarchy with John Dryden."

Rose wracked her brain, because the Doctor's proud expression signified this was important. "A poet or sommeffink, yeah?" The Doctor nodded impatiently. "Okay," said Rose, giving one more desultory glance at the window, "let's go in."

The Doctor put out his hand. "Not you. You're not allowed in. No women in any of the coffee shops." Rose waited a moment for the punch line. He was serious.

"What kind of a restaurant caters to half the population?"

"Dunno." Clearly he was enjoying her outrage. "But you stay here, I'll bring you your coffee, we'll drink it on the run, all right?" Rolling her eyes, she nodded.

"There should be a law against this kind of thing," she shouted, not caring that several passerby were staring at her in surprise.

"In sixteen-sixty-nine? Mind you," said the Doctor, "the housewives of London want to ban coffee shops altogether. Men come in, sit in there all day, smoke their pipes, talk to their friends . . ." He jerked his thumb toward the window. "Come home at all hours of night . . ."

"No wonder their wives are furious," Rose said dryly, blowing on her hands. She gave the Doctor a shove. "Now go on, you, and get me my coffee!" A grin was her only answer. She watched as the Doctor opened the door and swung inside. She walked up and down the street. How long was this going to take? She burrowed deeper into her shawls. She glanced suspiciously up and down the street. She nonchalantly turned her wrist toward her, flipping open Jack's watch. She pressed a few buttons as holograms and beeping noises erupted. "No, just tell me the bloody time!" she hissed. She forced the watch back into quietude, glancing anxiously around her.

None of the suddenly large throng of people pushing past her seemed to have noticed anything amiss. She wondered what exactly was drawing them all to this particular coffeehouse. She peered down the street. People in faded but clean costumes were whispering amongst themselves and pointing toward the coffeehouse. Suddenly someone tapped her shoulder. She saw the face of the Doctor—more curious and engaged than it had been when he'd left—pushing through the sea of people wanting inside. But she saw no coffee.

"Where's the--?"

"There's a ton of people inside."

"Yes, I can see that."

"So, you can slip in, and no one will notice." He grasped his hand around hers and pulled. She felt her pulse quickening as she squeezed past the throng of people, following the Doctor into the coffeehouse. Smells, many of them not pleasant, assaulted her. She held onto her hatboxes tightly, instinctively knowing this was prime territory for pickpockets. The Doctor pulled her through the crowd, and at last she saw the interior of the low-ceilinged but clean coffeehouse. Now the smells were more familiar—ground coffee beans and metal. The Doctor led her past the huge mass of people to a quiet corner, where two low, wide bowls were steaming.

She sat down on a bench next to the Doctor. A _dish _of coffee? Okay. It was black and piping hot, but it was the real thing. She sipped gratefully. The Doctor had his back to her and was craning his neck toward the crowd on the other side of the room. "What is it?" she asked. "Why are all these people here?"

"Coffeehouses and taverns sometimes display oddities and marvels, for the entertainment of the customers."

"What kind of oddities?"

"Human, animal . . ."

She gulped her coffee. "I don't want to see, Doctor."

He turned toward her in surprise. "Why not?"

Did he even have to ask? She checked herself: alien. "It's exploitative, and just . . . weird!" Did everything have to be weird and morbid, everywhere they went?

He nodded, but he didn't seem happy. "All right. We can go." She finished her coffee, at the same time noticing with some guilt that the Doctor hadn't touched his. He got up, his face emotionless as he prepared to steer through the crowd at the entrance, where it had continued to thicken to a point where Rose could no longer see the door. He didn't offer her his hand, so she kept up as best she could, catching some a speech. " . . . found not three days ago and kept preserved to satisfy the inquirin' minds, brought to you exclusively here at Will's Coffee House . . ."

"Doctor?" She'd lost sight of him between a fat man in an enormous wig and a suspiciously hooker-like woman. She stood on her tiptoes, trying for the door or the Doctor's distinctive silhouette. She spotted the door first and made for it, shoving herself forward.

" . . . discovered by a farmer in Hampstead, the morning after a great strange light was seen in the sky . . . it appears to be a child, but grossly deformed. Those with a weaker disposition are advised to turn away."

Rose followed the advice and pelted through the last tightly-packed, foul-smelling bodies that were between her and the door. As she landed on the street again, she for once relished the bitter cold of the air. She counted her hatboxes again and found she was missing one. "Oh, bloody . . ." She stared helplessly back at the coffee house, not relishing going back in. Where was the Doctor?

"Missing this, lady?" She turned to see a dirty-faced kid who belonged in _Great Expectations _dangling her hatbox, standing a few feet away. Just as she'd identified this, he took off at a pelt. Glancing over her shoulder, she picked up her skirts and ran after him—confident that she could remember the way back.

The Doctor had almost got out of the door when he heard the gasps. He couldn't resist turning around. "That's not human."


End file.
